How do I handle this...

I currently work for a company that manages the internet connections of about 1200 hotels across the US. My job requires me to answer support calls and do basic troubleshooting on our severs installed in hotels.

When I started working at the company I noticed a large amount of spam coming into our mail boxes from the company exchange server. This of course is annoying and makes my day just a little more misrable then it has to be. I decided to start doing a personal audit of our companys security and found
port 4444 sitting open on our companys exchange server.

Our company runs linux/open bsd on most of its equipment with cisco equipment linking it all. It looks like a solid setup from my probeing but this port really bothers me.

How do I determine exactly what is going on here with the open port on the server... every port list I have consulted says that this is a known port for RATs and if this server has been "owned" then every other server in the network is in trouble. If this really is a problem I need to know how to let my company know in a way which is going to get their attention. The managers I have made aware about this have shown little to no intrest and I think something is being missed.

Anyone been here before?

FN-

show them some websites with warnings to that port...

http://www.auditmypc.com/port/tcp-port-4444.asp

or get apacket sniffer and see if anythings going on there....

Stick on a packet sniffer (ethereal) and see what traffic is going out over this port, it's source and destination.

Try do disable this port if you are sure nothing legit is using it and see if anyone complains about not being able to do anything.

Just close it up, and if no one complains then it's safe to leave closed, but i doubt that there is any valid reason in why it should of been left wide open in the first place..

yeah, close it up.

If you want some impact, point out that in recent cases people have been sued over spam and if you have a compromised server you might be next.

What OS? If its XP SP2 or Server 2k3, try from a command prompt: netstat -nab

If its some other windows OS, try downloading Fport from foundstone: Here

Both of these will tell you what program has what port open...keep in mind that if there is a rootkit installed, you may not be able to trust netstat, in which case fport should be used...

This should at least provide a clue as to what has the port open...just at a glance, metasploit defaults to tcp/4444 quite frequently...should definitely look a little harder to see what is going on...

You may also want to check to make sure that the firewalls are not blocking this port by default. Sure, it may be open "inside" the network, but is it open from "outside" the network is probably a better question.

If it is open from outside the network, then you definetly have a problem.

My first thought whenever I see port 4444 open is Metasplolit...almost every payload will use port 4444 for the return shell.

It certainly does not need to be open on an exchange server for normal operation - have you tried to telnet to it and grab a banner - it may give you more of an insight - also try browsing to it with your web browser or even using Xprobe2 or Nmap to try and determine a service.

Either way no legitimate application will use port 4444 due to the stigma that surrounds it.

My guess is that you do not have admin access to the Exchange server so you will be unable to investigate it from a server point of view which only really leaves the options I mentioned above open to you- personally I would recommend you raise this with your domain admin as soon as you can and let him look into it - go direct to the person who is responsible for the mail server instead of your managers as he will have a vested interest in looking after the mail server.......

Your are correct is guessing that I don't have admin rights to this box. I had to use wireshark and nmap to find this port and it was done from my computer at home using wireshark via our webmail.

I'm gonna do some research on Metasplolit and see if it helps me figure out more about this.

Thanks.

FN-

My suggestion is to walk away...

You are probing your company's resources without permission... Depending on your Sys Admins you could find yourself without a job. Depending on where you live you could also be breaking the law...

If you really want to do something about it... Go to an internet cafe, see if the port is available from the internet (or if it's only on the LAN) and send an email from a throw away anonymous email account to the sys admin... Then forget about it.

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My suggestion is to walk away...

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I have to agree with this. Tell your main admin and let him handle it. Your port scanning from the outside, with out the admin's permission or knowledge is going to do one of two things; piss your admin off cause he thinks he is being attacked, or cause your IDS system to kick in and shut down every outside port (depending on the ids level of course), going into "protection" type status, which will also piss off your admin.

You are going down a road that will most likly end up with you being fired.

You have had fair warning. We (sys admins) don't like when asshats that work for the company take it upon themselves to start doing penetration testing. Personally this is grounds for immediate firing if I ever catch anyone doing this, and I have caught people both inside the network and outside the network trying this over the years. They no longer work for us.

-xmad

Sadly I can see the wisdom with the advice to forget about it....

I'm not seeing the big picture here. More then likely they already know about the security breach. I'm gonna focus more on learning C.

Thanks for the advice.

FN

Hmmmm,

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More then likely they already know about the security breach. I'm gonna focus more on learning C.

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Perhaps you should learn a bit more about your infrastructure and the nature of your industry? I would also recommend systems and process analysis.

You really should start with the problem as it is visualised by your "customers", then work backwards. The problem in this case is spam, and it is coming from your Exchange Server.

This raises a number of questions:

1. Is the origin outside your infrastructure?
2. What is the content of the spam?
3. To whom is it addressed?

I too support hotels, and I can tell you that they are absolute magnets for spam. That is because they are totally promiscuous with their e-mail addresses, and get picked up by spambot harvesters.

The general solution to this is to implement spam filtering, preferably at the server side of the infrastructure.

Whilst having port 4444 open might not be a good idea, it is not the cause of the much more general problem of spam.

As some of my fellow members have suggested, if you go to the server Admin and tell him that port 4444 is open he will probably not be best pleased. On the other hand, if you go to him and tell him that HIS server is spewing spam to YOUR customers and they are p1$$ed about it............ it is a completely different matter. ;)

Trust me, you will learn to love the politics :D

The sound of a hammer hitting a nail on the head.

thanks nihil

FN

You may not have to walk away just yet. The Wolfman agree's that nmap may be intrusive and trigger your IDS, which in turn will leave your admin with-out a groove and less funktified.

A simple test that may identify the service on port 4444 is telnet.

Code:

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telnet 127.0.0.1 4444

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You can also try http

Code:

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http://127.0.0.1:4444

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If the service is offering a banner, or web service, the above techniques may identify the unknown service.

I AM THE WOLFMAN!